


We grow accustomed to the dark

by zinjadu



Series: Wed to Blight [28]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Anger, Angst, Broodmothers (Dragon Age), Deep Roads (Dragon Age), Dragon Age: Origins Quest - A Paragon of Her Kind, Female Friendship, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Sexual Violence, Traumatized Tabris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 01:19:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19052341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: The truth of Broodmothers is haunting for most, but for Caitwyn Tabris it brings up all the memories she suppressed in the worst way.TW: memories of sexual trauma and assault.DOUBLE POST TODAY!  Please readOur share of night to bearfirst.





	We grow accustomed to the dark

_ Broodmother… _

Caitwyn clenched her jaw, forcing the bile down, refusing to break apart like rotten fruit hitting the ground.  The cavern was vile, the corruption thick and undulating across her skin no matter how hard she tried to shut it away.  The floor itself was  _ flesh _ , and the  _ thing _ sat like a slug in the middle of all the filth.  She ducked underneath a flailing tentacle, standing to lash out with a vicious kick at a genlock, then knocked an arrow, drew and fired, pinning another tentacle to the ground before it tripped Oghren.  Behind her Morrigan let lightning fly from her fingers. The purple energy seared the rotten air as it arced from darkspawn to darkspawn to broodmother, making her, no  _ it _ , scream.  Its shrill cry filled the cavern, and more of its spawn burst forth.  Caitwyn fought and fought and fought, a scream of her own echoing in her mind.

Then it was done, Shale pummeling the grotesque creature past its endurance, and all was silence.  Sick, wet silence and she refused to think about the substances that covered her, covered all of them.  The scream built behind her teeth, but she forced it down, down into the pit of her stomach where the corruption oozed up inside of her like a patch of oil.  

She had a madwoman to kill.  

Caitwyn tracked the Paragon through traps and darkspawn, on and on, Branka’s mad justifications a bitter gall in her own mouth.  Maker help her, she prayed, but she didn’t know if the Maker could see her down here, under the rock and rot. Maybe the dwarves right, and all that mattered down here was the Stone, and the Stone was hard and unyielding; it did not help.

Control slipped and slid away from her, ice creaking and cracking through her veins, freezing to the heart of her like a river in winter.  She was a statue of ice, no longer a woman of flesh and blood. Flesh was weak, blood stained the ground— _ Blood turning the dirt of an alley to mud, Shianni’s blood running from between her legs _ —bodies were things to be  _ used _ .  Not inviolate, never inviolate.

Her mind railed, her horror growing when the nature of golems were revealed, and she wanted to bring down the whole damned cavern.  Erase it from existence as if somehow it could all be cleansed away if it could be but  _ forgotten _ , as if sins old and new could be left to die in the dark.  But that wasn’t possible. Sins grew in the dark places: Branka’s, Caradin’s… and Caitwyn’s own sins, the dark patches on her own soul, ones that would never come off no matter how she tried to scour the memories away.  No matter how she thought they had grown faint by the light of another.

Branka and Caradin died for their sins, one screaming about injustice, the other stoic and only wanting to be free.

Then only Caitwyn was left.  Her and her sins, alone in the dark.

 

* * *

 

Night had no meaning in the Deep Roads, but weariness was still the same.  Back to the Dead Trenches, on the other side of Kardol’s line, they found the safety to rest.  The Legion had not expected them to come back, and Caitwyn understood what it meant that to come down to the Deep Roads was to accept one’s own death.  She had killed something inside of herself to get back, to walk back through the broodmother’s cavern again, to make herself ask after Oghren and Shale, forcing down, down, down, all the screams that filled her lungs until every breath ached.

“We’ll rest here, a few hours, then move out.”  Her voice was tight, and she was uncertain how she could keep speaking without it all spilling out, spilling out like pus, like bile, like blood, tainted and wrong, wrong from the inside out.  Her hands shook, a tremor nothing more, and she closed her hands into fists. Breathing out carefully, she forced her mind to her focus on mundane. Tasks, she had tasks in front of her, and she put everything else out of her mind as she gave her whole attention to the simple matter of laying out her bedroll. 

“Will you eat something?” Morrigan asked, yellow eyes sharp in the firelight, like a cat’s.

“Gotta eat, Warden,” Oghren added, his gruff grumble unusually blunted.  Morrigan’s lip curled in distaste that she would agree with the dwarf on any subject.  Shale kept her peace, thankfully. Caitwyn shook her head, and her stomach turned over again as her braid moved in one sticky, matted mass, covered in fluids that she did not want to think about.  Forcing another slow breath out through her nose, she clawed her way to the conversation.

“Too tired to eat for once.  Just going to try to sleep.” She hated how her tones were clipped, unable to keep the broken pieces of her hidden from their sight.  Thankfully, no one seemed to notice, so she curled up in her bedroll wanting nothing more than to be able to pull her blanket up over her head and make the world go away like she had done as a child.  But there was no escaping the thoughts that slithered through her head, round and round, undulating and twisting through her consciousness, twining about her memories:  _ a hand at her neck, a knee on her stomach, holding her down, the scent of unwashed men, the cold stone floor of the store room, blood on her hands, blood in her mouth, blood between Shianni’s legs. _

_ It should have been me _ .

_ It could still be me.  In the dark and deep, another girl’s turn, into her mouth they spew, she is violated, becomes the beast… _

Caitwyn sat bolt upright and a quick glance told her all was quiet.  Shale’s gaze was turned toward the chasm, and Morrigan’s even breathing said she was asleep.  Oghren’s snores spoke for themselves. Feeling on silent feet, Caitwyn huddled behind a pillar of rock as she fell to her knees throwing up even though she had next to nothing in her stomach.  Her whole body trembled, and she threw up again, bile running down her chin as tears traced down her cheeks but no sound escaped her.  _ Quiet, quiet, not a sound, can’t let them hear, can’t let them know _ ,  _ weak, dirty _ , the words old and indelible. 

“Caitwyn?”  Her name was a hush on Morrigan’s lips and the girl who had been held down in an alley lifted her head to see the witch standing over her with those cat’s eyes.  Hissing, Caitwyn sat back from her own mess like it was magma, shame burning in her belly. 

“Are you ill, injured?” Morrigan asked as she knelt.  Her hand extended to touch Caitwyn’s brow, but Caitwyn backed away from the touch as if it were brand.  The question knocked at something old and tangled inside of her, and Caitwyn glared at Morrigan.

“Ill?  Injured?   _ Yes _ ,” Caitwyn grit out, sitting up and surging forward toward Morrigan, their faces inches apart.  Startled by the sudden movement, the other woman drew back, and normally distant, dismissive eyes widened in shock as a hand came up between them as if to ward off a dangerous animal.

“I’m so  _ fucking _ ill, so Maker-damned hurt, but it’s nothing anyone can fix, Morrigan.  Not you, not Wynne, not anyone. It’s been this way for  _ years _ .  Do you know why?”  Caitwyn spat the bitter words, the horror, fear and anger of the past several days bursting out of her like a lanced boil.  “It’s  _ in me _ , always in me.  He held me down, I was thirteen and he held me down, like I was  _ nothing _ , just another knife-ear that needed a lesson.  Killed him, stabbed him before he could stab me.”  The paltry joke, the black sickness of it wound her up even more, and she stopped paying attention to how Morrigan reacted.  It had suddenly stopped mattering what the other woman thought of her, just that she had to expunge the rot.

“I learned my lesson though, oh I fucking  _ learned _ .  Never let them get close again, and played the good girl, the good daughter, was going to get married, but then it all went to shit.  Men, powerful men saw us, took us, took what they wanted, because that’s what people with power do. What they want. We weren’t people, no, we were things to possess to play with, and they took my cousin.  My little cousin, only sixteen, they took her  _ first _ ,” Caitwyn sobbed, voice breaking.  The tears came back, and her stomach twisted as if she would throw up again, and her limbs went limp as if she had run all day.

“I killed them, I killed them all, killed  _ him _ for what he did, but it never goes away.  Blood doesn’t wash away the pain, it only makes you bloody.  And I’ll never be rid of it, always be  _ weak _ ,  _ dirty, wrong _ , because it’s like having a wound but in your mind.  It never healed right, never could, and I’m not right because of it.  Always off, always… always—” Her words ended in a gasp; it was impossible to breathe, to get enough air.  Under the mountains, how far down, how did air get  _ down here? _  How could they breathe at all?

Morrigan’s hand cracked against her face.  Hard. Caitwyn glared at the woman she had thought was becoming her friend, burning cold rage lancing through her, because  _ how dare _ , and then—

“You,” Morrigan said imperiously, though not without a slight quaver, a touch of uncertainty that Caitwyn had never heard in the woman’s voice before.  “You will cease this at once. It serves no one, least of all yourself. You are stronger than whatever happened to you. It happened, but it is not all of you.  Hold to that. Do you understand what I mean? Do you?” 

The challenge was clear in Morrigan’s voice, and Caitwyn seized on it, pulling herself out of her own disjointed, twisted memories.  Her breathing slowed to a normal pace, and Caitwyn focused on the feel of the stone underneath her, the draft from the cavern above, and the crackle of the fire only a little ways distant.  Rooted in the world, she found the will to speak without losing her way in the jagged words that lived inside her still.

“I do,” Caitwyn whispered.  Green eyes met gold, a lifeline back to herself in the deep darkness.  Morrigan nodded, as if satisfied, and then one pale hand gingerly lifted Caitwyn’s braid for examination. 

“Good.  Now, perhaps t’would be prudent to fix this… unpleasant situation, yes?” Morrigan’s gaze took in the whole mess that Caitwyn presented, as if Caitwyn’s outburst had never been.  But that wasn’t true. Morrigan had seen her weak and out of control, but instead of despising her, she had been concerned for her. 

“That would be appreciated, thank you.”  

Morrigan withdrew a cloth from her pouch of herbs and sundries to roughly wipe away the evidence of Caitwyn’s tears and clean away the bile on her chin.  Then she settled behind Caitwyn and drew her knife. As Morrigan cut away her hair, Caitwyn felt lighter with each dark curl that fell away, like she was thirteen, before that fateful day, when she had been confident and bright, unafraid, when she had been able to trust without making herself do so.  This feeling would go away. She knew it would, but for now, for now she had a friend who had seen the darkest parts of her and had not abandoned her.

“Morrigan.”

“Yes?”

“No one else knows,” she whispered.  Caitwyn curled her legs up under her chin, and Morrigan’s hands briefly fell away from her hair.  Then the knife cut again, paring away another lock of curls.

“I would not divulge your secret,” Morrigan promised.  Caitwyn breathed out slowly, relief pooling in her chest.  She might still be broken, some things were too deep to fix entirely, but at least she wasn’t broken and  _ alone _ .

And maybe, just maybe, she might be able to get some sleep.


End file.
